


I Have a Master Plan (My Future's In My Hands)

by Zetal (Rodinia)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: College Discussion, Gen, retirement fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-22 20:55:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20880533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rodinia/pseuds/Zetal
Summary: Things have settled down, and the Winchesters are starting to look at a post-hunting life.  Jack has several ideas for what he wants to do, and decides that one of the things he's going to do is go to school.  He quickly gets overwhelmed by the amount of choices, and goes to Sam to ask for help.





	I Have a Master Plan (My Future's In My Hands)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flightoftheseraph](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flightoftheseraph/gifts).

> Thank you so much for the bid! Hope you enjoy this. <3

Jack carried the laptop he’d been staring at for the past four hours down the hall, knocking on the door to Sam’s room. “Sam? Can I ask you a question?”

Sam looked up from his book, and when he saw the computer, he set it aside. “Sure. What’s up?”

“I’ve been thinking about what I want to do with myself now.” Lucifer was dead, Michael was gone, Jack’s grace was diminished but returning, and the world was more peaceful than Castiel could remember seeing it from this level, he’d said. Dean and Sam had agreed to take some time off from hunting – they weren’t going to try going for a normal life; every time they did, something came along to mess it up. They could kick back in the Bunker, watch movies, play foosball, and offer research and support to hunters out in the field, though.

Jack wasn’t sure that was what he wanted. There was so much to do and see and learn, and he wanted to get to know his world. Dean had suggested getting a car and going for a road trip. Castiel suggested using his wings to explore instead. Sam had suggested that he go to school, and even offered to fake the documents to let him.

“Good for you. Have you decided anything?”

“Yeah. Why not do all three?” Jack grinned at the look on Sam’s face. “School has breaks, and I can use short ones to go on flights and longer ones to road trip, and in between, I’m learning things I couldn’t learn that way.” Off Sam’s “fair enough” face, Jack added, “I’m trying to figure out what I want to study, though. And where. Dean thinks that if I’m gonna go to school, I should go to Stanford, make you proud.”

Sam’s eyebrows nearly shot off his head. “Wait, you talked to Dean about this, and he’s giving you advice instead of yelling at you for abandoning your family?” Jack tried to figure out what to say to that, but he was spared by Sam shaking his head and waving him off. “Sorry, that wasn’t… it’s not the same. I’d love to see you go to Stanford, but I don’t think it’s the right place for you right off the bat.”

That was not at all what Jack had expected to hear, and he set his computer down on the desk before he could drop it. “Why not?”

“Because you have no experience with school. You’re a quick learner and I know that there’s a lot of facts and stuff inside you just waiting for you to access them, but if I ask you to write me a five-page paper about color symbolism in _The Red Badge of Courage_, do you think you could do it? Do you have any idea how to study for an exam? Can you cite your sources for a project on the history of freed slaves in the South after the Civil War?”

That gave Jack pause. Could he do those things? He’d learn quickly, he was sure, but he had to admit, “No, I don’t think I could. But I can’t start with kindergarten, can I? I look too old.”

“Yeah… you might be able to pass for high school, but that brings its own set of problems.” Sam got up and came to the computer. “I’d recommend a community college for you. Go for a quarter or a semester or whatever it is they do, take some random classes. You’re looking for classes that will teach you academic skills, but also for something that might spark an interest.”

“Okay, but won’t that cause the same problem? Won’t it seem weird that I don’t know how to write a paper?”

“Nah, not really.” Sam typed for a bit, pulling up a website. “See, at community colleges, anyone can enroll. We’ll still have to fake a high school transcript for you, but that’s no problem and once it’s done it’s done. The point is that they’re used to students who didn’t do well in high school for whatever reason, or who haven’t been in high school in a long time, or something like that. No one will bat an eye at having to teach you how to cite sources. A school like Stanford, though? The people who get into Stanford already know how to do those things, so the professors spend more time on specific expectations or their content.”

“Oh.” Jack looked at the website – Cloud County Community College. “Why this one?”

“Because it’s only fifty miles from here. Sure, you could go to Texas or California or Massachusetts, but from fifty miles away it wouldn’t really surprise anyone if you commuted. You could still live here, so that if you do run into something the teachers think you should know and you don’t, I can help you.”

“But I could do that from anywhere. I can fly,” Jack reminded Sam.

“Yeah, I know, and I don’t care if you end up going to school in China, you’d better visit regularly,” Sam teased. “The thing is your classmates wouldn’t expect you to be available for evening study groups without specific planning, or social activities, or whatever it is community college kids do in their free time. A lot of them have jobs. I know you’ll make friends, and want to hang out with them, but there are certain things you’ll have to learn to do so you won’t blow your cover.”

“Like pretend to commute, or actually live there if it’s too far for that to be believable.” Another good reason to go to a community college, Jack figured. By saying he commuted, he could ease into the rest of it later. “So a bunch of random classes? Like what?”

“Here.” Sam clicked around until he found a course catalog. “When you enroll, this is what you should sign up for – interdisciplinary studies. See?” He pointed to a list of requirements. “This shows you a bunch of different areas. I’d say pick five classes, from different areas. English Composition would be a good one, that’ll teach you how to write essays. Math, art, history, psychology, science… probably should do a science, that’ll teach you some lab skills you might need if you decided to go into something science-y.”

Jack looked over the list. It seemed so overwhelming, trying to pick. There were so many possibilities, how did he narrow it down to five? Or three, if he followed Sam’s suggestion to do English and science.

“Don’t forget, you’ll have two semesters, and possibly summer classes if you want to do that instead of going for a summer road trip,” Sam reminded him. “You’re just picking five for now. If you find your passion, great, you can use your second semester to explore further, but if you don’t, that’s okay. You can try again in the spring. If you need another year, you can do that, too. Really, depending on where you go… Stanford encourages students to take the first year or two as exploration years and then focus on their major in their junior and senior years. It doesn’t work out well for things like electrical engineering, but most majors, you should be fine doing that.”

“Oh. Why five at a time?” Jack looked over the list. English, science, and then he could do a math, a humanities, and a social science. The problem was that some of those areas were a lot bigger than others, and all of the sub-categories looked interesting. Maybe not foreign language, he could figure that out on his own, but art? History? Sociology? Psychology? So many good options.

“Well, most people can only handle so much at once, and average course load is fifteen units. Most of these classes are three or four units, so four or five classes puts you at average. Once you know what you’re doing, you’ll probably be able to handle more than the average load, because of how little sleep you need to function properly, but…”

“Another thing to do to hide that I’m not human,” Jack finished for him. At least it made sense.

“Plus not overwhelm you while you’re learning the academic skills,” Sam added. “Speaking of, here, look at this. They have a one-credit class about career planning you can take to explore interests and strengths and weaknesses. That could help you figure out where to look into things.”

“Hmm.” Jack looked through the course listings. The problem wasn’t finding enough interesting ones, it was deciding what looked interesting enough to pursue. “When did you figure out what you wanted to do?”

“Second year at Stanford. When I got there, I knew I wanted to go into something where I could help people, but I didn’t know what or how. Didn’t want to go to medical school, I knew that, I’d seen enough bodies, and I really didn’t want to be an engineer. Third quarter, I took a class through the law school just to see what that was like, and I fell in love. I talked to people at the law school, and ended up being a history major with a sociology minor and FGS… feminist, gender, and sexuality studies. The senior project I was working on when I left dealt with how families have changed and the impact that’s had on society.”

Jack smiled and hugged Sam. “It sounds like you miss it.”

“I do. After all this time, I can’t pick up where I left off, but if Dean’s not gonna call it abandoning my family, maybe I should go back to college. If nothing else, take some online classes.”

Jack perked up. “Online classes? Classes where I can take as many as I can handle without drawing suspicion?”

“Don’t do it for the first semester. Once you see how that goes, you can make the call on second semester or future classes, but this first semester is more about getting you comfortable with classes and deadlines and project guidelines, so doing online classes too would overwhelm you and possibly put you off the whole school idea all together.” Sam gave Jack a sympathetic smile. “Hey, man, just because you can’t pursue every interesting-looking class right away doesn’t mean you won’t have opportunities. You’ll just need to be a little patient, that’s all.”

“I guess.” Jack went back to looking through course listings. There were so many. “How did you decide what to take your first semester?”

“Stanford does quarters, but what I did is what they recommended. I picked about eight or nine classes that sounded interesting, went to the first day or two, and then decided what seemed most interesting or useful. I signed up for three right away to get to the twelve credit hours you need to be full-time – it was actually fourteen, but that’s beside the point – and then added the one that seemed most fun after the first day. Not every school encourages that, but it worked for me.”

“What did you take?”

“A writing class that every freshman had to take, figured I might as well get it over with, a computer science class that was recommended for everyone, Spanish since I had to have a foreign language no matter what I ended up majoring in, and then I added an introductory history seminar.”

“Cool.” Also unhelpful. Jack didn’t have requirements, and he wasn’t at Stanford.

“One thing to consider is that classes fill up, or two classes you might want to take could be scheduled at the same time. You’ll want backups.”

“All right. So, easy decision, the English composition. Math… how do I know what math to take?”

“There’s a test, the Accuplacer, I’ll get you set up to take it. Should also take the ACT or SAT or both before you go to a four-year school, but for community college, it won’t matter.” Sam got out his own computer and started typing. “Probably college algebra, though. What’s next?”

“Science… there’s only two areas there, physical and life science.” Jack scrolled down to the science classes. “Should I take the one for majors? Since I don’t know what I’m majoring in?”

“You can, but it’s up to you. Are you planning on transferring these credits, or starting fresh when you get to a four-year school?”

“Um… credits transfer? I didn’t know that. Which if I’m going to retake it, it doesn’t matter which one I do, so I can sign up for general biology instead of the majors biology class. Or I could do geology, or astronomy, or… hey, this sounds cool, natural hazards! I want to take that one!” Jack made a note of it, and added geology as a backup. “Social science has six areas… geography, I think I can skip, I can pick that up with road trips. Anthropology or sociology or psychology all sound cool. Economics, not so much.”

“I think you’ll like any of those three. You love people.”

Jack read through course descriptions. “Human sexuality? They have a class about sex?”

Sam set his laptop aside, coming to look over Jack’s shoulder at the course description. “It’s probably not what you’re thinking. It’s about gender identity and sexuality. I… wouldn’t recommend taking the class here, nobody in Lebanon’s said anything to Cas or my face, but Kansas isn’t exactly the best place for people who don’t fit the gender they’re assigned or aren’t straight. If you go to Stanford, take it there, it’s less likely to piss you off.”

“Oh.” Jack went back through, eventually deciding on social psychology as his first choice with human relations and sociology as backups. “Humanities is going to be the hardest. Even leaving out foreign language, there are seven areas listed.”

“Do they have a general humanities course?”

Jack scrolled through the catalogue. “Yeah, here it is.” He read the description. “But I have to have the composition class before I can take it. So I still have to pick one to take first.”

“Literature’s probably gonna have the same problem, then. History… can you time travel?”

Jack tilted his head, thinking about it. “Probably? If you’re asking, there must be a reason for it…”

“Angels can time travel – or at least, they could before the Fall burned their wings. Talk to Castiel, see if he can help you figure out if you can do it or not? That would make history classes more interesting, but also possibly more annoying, if we’ve got stuff wrong and you go back to see it.”

“Okay, so save history for later. Hmm.” Jack looked through. “If I took History of Rock Music, do you think I could talk Dean into taking it with me?”

Sam snorted. “Probably a better chance with that than any other class, but then you’d have to listen to his opinion on everything.”

“True. Art Appreciation, Music Appreciation, Theater Appreciation… those all sound kinda interesting, I guess, but…” Jack looked through. “Drawing? Painting? Philosophy? I still think the rock music sounds the most interesting.”

“Then take it. Even if Dean doesn’t take it with you, I bet he’d love to talk about what you learned in class. Keep the others for backups if you need them.”

That sounded like a good idea to Jack, and now he had a plan. “When do I take that test you mentioned?”

“Tomorrow, probably, so I can get it set up properly. In the meantime, there’s an application you’ll need to fill out, and tell me what documents I need to either find or forge to get everything done. Are you going to go on a road trip before you start school?”

“I don’t think so. I’ll probably go for a couple flights, maybe ask Dean if we can go fishing again. Do you think you could show me some of the things you mentioned that I need to learn to do? Like how to study or do homework or whatever? So I’m not showing up to school completely hopeless?”

“I’d love to do that, Jack. Your assignments will be related to hunting, so it’s a familiar subject with a new skill. Give me a couple days to figure out a plan to get you what you need most.” Sam smiled as something occurred to him. “Dean is going to spend a lot of time complaining about me turning you into a nerd.”

“What’s wrong with being a nerd?”

“Absolutely nothing, and don’t let Dean ever tell you there is. He was a jock in high school, he’s jealous of the nerds’ brains.”

“But… he’s so smart. He’s brilliant. Why is he jealous?”

Sam sighed and didn’t answer for a while. “We moved around so much that he always felt behind at school, and eventually, he just gave up. Me, I saw school as my ticket out, so I was motivated to catch up and patch holes and do whatever it took. Dean saw school as interfering with his real work, so he didn’t care, and he dropped out when he was old enough. He was smart enough, he could have gone to Stanford too, and I think he’s always resented that I got that chance and he didn’t. He’ll never admit to it, though.”

“Oh.” Jack still didn’t understand, but he thought he had enough to let it go. “Thanks for helping me, Sam.”


End file.
